It’s all the game…

Take it too seriously and you will fuck up again and again and again.

This I think is the lesson I learnt today. It doesn’t sum up to something great, however, it makes life simpler for me.
This part here is the fork in the road. It is part where I start a discourse or shut up because the point has been made.

I choose the latter.

I want!

There are those who tell me they seek adventure and there are others who demand peace. I’ve been both these people and neither side feels like a breeze. Just for the record, as of today I seek peace. I think I have understood why we, or at least I keep chasing that elusive something.

We are the TV generation, we, how much ever we hate to admit it, lack imagination. Most of my definition of a good life was based on sitcoms. Sitting in Central Perk, or working in that high paid corporate where I make money that doesn’t ever get taxed, living it large without bothering about rent or maintenance, obviously there would be none of those nasty bills for electricity, phone, broadband and whatever else I need to be fantastic. The food would be ready just as I wake up, or there’s always that restaurant on the way, of course there was none of that trans-fats. So no matter what I did, life would be FANTASTIC!

Life has an odd little habit, she likes to take your delusions and shatter them, hard. So, in time I got that job, yes it paid well, but it didn’t seem enough. There was no after work life, there were no BFFs made in the work place and there was always the matter of bills, responsibilities and taxes. Being upset became the norm. Life isn’t fair I thought, I don’t have what I want. Everyone else does. She is not as old as I, she’s married, she’s got a better job, better yet everyone loves her, not to mention the iPhone/iPad/MacBook or all of the above! Now these are different hers and sometimes the same. These are just hypothetical targets that my mind would be happy to bash up on request.

A mind, if bestowed with some rationality, questions. Mine did, and am I glad it did. The question was very simple, “what the hell is up here?” Inclined to answer, a mental journey was embarked upon. The journey was long and laboured and didn’t really get anywhere. It just came back to several blanks before I heard the F.R.I.E.N.D.S sound track and I struck gold! I wanted what they told me I should have. I wanted the shiny sitcom life. I wanted to have the million dollar body, the zillion dollar job, friends who would be loyal and affectionate and pick me up from every mess I make. Alas, I wanted the whole nine yards. Unfortunately, everyone I knew also wanted the same things.

When this understanding dawned, I wanted to ban TV and the million sitcoms. I wanted to yell atop roofs or at least tweet about what this damned idiot box had done to me. Then I realised, I was hooked to the hope of someone rescuing me. There shone brilliantly yet another symptom of the sitcom infested mind, nothing was ever my fault, I was the do-gooder victim again. No more, I vowed. Entertainment was escape, but escape isn’t life. 

My pace is slower now, I don't really want all those things, they do start a little stir, I confess. However, now I can walk past them. Life isn't all that bad, just a little more real than that on TV.

I am infiniti

I am opinionated, this is a fact that I openly admit today. However, there was a time when I couldn’t. I thought it to be wrong, selfish and worst of all, I thought it was necessary to fit in! I agreed, I nodded at the right times, I gave in because it quite simply avoided conflict. But over time (and I am glad that it was a short period) I realized I hate it. All it did was keep me cocooned and safe, but there wasn’t any life.

This lack of life, rather lack of me took me onto a path of self-immolation. There was no me, just parts of me that were scathed, burnt, chaffed and scabbed with the many versions of what I thought others wanted to see. This meant that there was a best friend me, putting up with all the underhanded BS that was labeled just for fun, there was the good student me who studied what she was expected to rather than what she wanted to, there was the daughter me who yes mumed and yes daded till kingdom come. There was the metal chick me, who head-banged to every death double base beat that ever was. There was also the girlfriend me who agreed and adjusted till it hurt. What does it really get me? A big fat nothing!

People who are at the happy end of this adjustment, the people who receive, who are adjusted for don’t know that it is being done. There is no blaming them; it was I who wanted to fit in. This is just a fair warning to all those who chose to be like someone else, please someone else and fit in. Pretense just works for so long before it begins to hurt. Today I speak freely, dress in my own hobo way, I pair floaters with formals and add ketchup to everything. I do this because of only one very simple reason, I want to.

This I want to bit has its own cons though. No one can be blamed for who I am, no one to take the fall for the stupid decision made, no one to imitate without a conscious thought, life is back on full manual, no more auto focus, no more pre-destined arrangements. But then I am okay with it, at least, it is my life. 

Life is difficult.

That is it. That is the key to all there is; was and ever will be. Accept it and living automatically becomes simple. Most of my life was spent thinking, ‘it will get better’, ‘things will change’, and every other form of placebo I was willing to give myself and be happy. 

No one really told me that making life easy is not just difficult, it is impossible. Life gets tougher with each moment that passes. Just like a game, the next level is tougher, you plough on, you get through and another level is right there waiting for you.

So yes, the money is never going to be enough, the friends won’t ever be as cool as you want them to be, your mother will never understand you. Your great idea will get rejected again and again; the diligent budgeting will eventually die a terrible death when an emergency or a want takes precedence. There will be those who seem to have everything and others who seem forever lost. I feel both and at times I feel both at the same instant. But that is just me, just who I am, unique just like everyone else suffering the human condition.

Today my eyes were stuck open, today I believe I see a little more clearly. I see that none of this, nothing at all matters. If I can go to sleep smiling and wake up with the strength to fight on, I am more successful that most people I know. The bank balance can be made, the clothes can be bought, the body can be sculpted provided I really want to. However, want alone does nothing. Positive thinking only keeps one positive. Living like there is no tomorrow and acceptance of all there is at least gives a realistic view of what is.

This view for me today is that life is difficult. I accept it.